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America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

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Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#591

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #584
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But worth a shot. Worth betting the entire US economy on it?

No. Nothing is but is that what's happening? Huge bets were made on the Internet technology in the US and it paid off even with the dot com bubble bursting. If we don't stay on top of technology then we will simply be passed by China. People also said the Internet was going revolutionize everything in the 90s and it did. AI is already pretty impressive and we are just in the infancy of the technology.

The thing is, China seems to be able to keep up with much less invested. I don't know how much it took for them to create DeepSeek and their other power efficient models, but it sure doesn't take much to run them. Meanwhile American AI seems to have a limitless hunger for energy.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#592

Post by robocat »

hadlock wrote: post #566
deadbabe wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you can run a GPT5 level LLM locally on a device, it’s over. All this mighty infrastructure is no longer any more impressive than a top of the line 2013 Mac Pro in 2025. I think we’re 10 years away from that.

Consumer devices are already available that offer 128gb specifically labeled for AI use. I think server side AI will still exist for IoT devices, but I agree, 10 years seems pretty reasonable timelie to buy a GTX 5080-sized card that will have 1TB of memory, with the ability to pair it with another one for 2TB. For local, non-distributed use, GPUs are already more than capable of doing 20+ tokens/s, we're mostly wait…

Are we constrained by RAM production?

RAM Price per GB Projected to decline at 15% per annum.

That's quite a few years before you'll get double the RAM.

For mobile I'm guessing power constraints matter too.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#593

Post by cpursley »

baq wrote: post #472
cpursley wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to do? They’re doing it now, and are ahead of the west in some processes already. It’s a made up concern because they are a geopolitical rival. And their economy is already a major success story; they’ve lifted something like 800 million people out of abject poverty in the last 25 years.

I don't disagree about the economic outcome today, but I don't understand how you can say that demographics issues are made up - either they are made up in the west, too, or they aren't. Nobody knows what will happen in the next 25 years, maybe nothing much, maybe we'll all be replaced by humanoid robots in the west, in the east and in the third world, too.

They are made up in sense of it being some kind huge pending disaster for China. Also, trends can reverse with the right policies.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#594

Post by mainecoder »

nradov wrote: post #516
anonymars wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China disintegrates into another civil war within the next few decades I'm curious about your reasoning on this. China was not the one at the top of my list of "Major world powers likely to have a civil war sooner than later"

China has had major internal violent conflicts many times: in 1967, 1960, 1937, 1916, 1856, and so on. Another civil war probably isn't imminent but based on historical patterns it's entirely possible in our lifetimes. There could be an external shock in terms of a severe disruption in food or energy imports, or an internal power struggle between CCP factions. Xi Jinping isn't immortal and no one can predict what mig…

It is highly unlikely because the government has an explicit goal of bringing harmony, and the people have had such a uniform upbringing that even their discussions of politics is around policy effectiveness, economics of implementation and metrics where as here in the US it is republican vs democrat and the topic is about Transgender issue or something that is not policy but a belief or some intangible thing that does not make a material difference for the majority of people.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#595

Post by nebula8804 »

grues-dinner wrote: post #522
nebula8804 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a demographic implosion coming soon. You look at a video like this and count how many humans there are to make this $20-30 speaker and you realize that this $20 speaker is not going to be automated, its just going to go away as an option. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFYxSX6xP2U

Lots of that design can be fairly easily automated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwzz-96WliU . And that's without all the "fancy" robotics like arms and so on that is only dropping in price and rising in usability. Factory automation design as a service is already a huge sector but it can get a lot bigger. Of course the capital barrier to entry to standing up a factory for some widget will go up, but the unit pric…

Thats a nice video, thanks for sharing. Everything shown there is old school automation of which China has a whole ecosystem for years. ALso they did they deliberately show only 1-3 steps of the process? Wheres the rest of the speaker? My video showed the speaker production from magnet to packaged box. I'm not convinced that there is a cost advantage yet since all of that technology shown existed in spades for years and yet my modern video shows people are still making speakers by hand. But it is making me think that maybe they can pull it off eventually. (Maybe the US can as well)

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#596

Post by grafmax »

syntaxing wrote: post #295

I’m a software engineer now but I was a design mechanical engineer for a decade. In America, mechanical engineers always felt like the bottom of barrel. The pay, benefits, and authority was always worse, even at the big tech companies. Culturally, America wants manufacturing back but doesn’t give it the respect it deserves.

It’s a rent extraction economy not an industrial one.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#597

Post by redleggedfrog »

mrinterweb wrote: post #505

Investing in AI infrastructure seems very risky to me. With how short of a lifecycle computing hardware generally has, does it make sense to blow billions on hardware that will need to be replaced in a few years? AI companies have been burning billions on hardware. Will the costs of that hardware be covered by profits before the hardware lifecycle is up? That's a big gamble. We used to talk about AI as having no moat…

You're assuming that gold is going towards infrastructure. I don't think a lot of it is. I think it's a money grab while the getting's good.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#598

Post by MisterTea »

chii wrote: post #440
tclancy wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a really interesting generation gap issue in the replies to your comment. What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools while the older folks are thinking (I imagine) “if the tools have lasted that long they must be well-honed and very good”. Of course, this could simply be the perspective of someone turning 50 this year.

The thing is, those 50 yr old machine tools might be still good, but the more recent CNC machines are much more efficient, and require way less manual dexterity to use (say, compared to a lathe). This is the whole idea of industrialization - moving away from having skilled artisans, into machines that encode the skill to reproduce the article. The fact that machines that are 50 yrs old are still in operation is quite…

As someone who grew up in a machine and wood working shop and now builds, repairs and retrofits machinery, I can say that 50 years old is nothing and absolutely fine.

> The thing is, those 50 yr old machine tools might be still good, but the more recent CNC machines are much more efficient, and require way less manual dexterity to use (say, compared to a lathe).

I assume you are referring to manual operated machinery vs CNC machinery? Otherwise there is little to no efficiency gained from a new CNC machine. I've run both and the setup of a CNC for simple jobs that can be done on a manual isn't worth the effort. CNC's really shine at high production and very complex parts.

> The fact that machines that are 50 yrs old are still in operation is quite a feat but also an indication that the production methods remained static

If the requirements haven't changed, e.g. machining flanges that meet ASME B16.5, and the production methods are already optimized, why even bring this up?

> (of course, if the production machines are good enough already, then investment into new machines don't bring in new profits).

Right. If the specs didn't change then why bother investing in pointless upgrades?

The ONLY reason companies toss out machinery: it's no longer useful to the company, or so hopelessly broken that it cant be fixed. And there is very little that can render a machine scrap unless something catastrophic happened. And there is very little preventing old machinery from being retrofitted with new controls.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#599

Post by toephu2 »

What many Americans don't realize is that China has already surpassed the United States in terms of development (developing country vs developed country sense of the word). Obviously both are 'developed' countries at this point but compare Chinese tier 1 cities vs American tier 1 cities. I would argue Chinese tier 1 cities are 10-20 years ahead of their American counterparts.

source: visit any Chinese tier 1 city (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen) and it will blow your mind if you've only lived in the West.

And if you haven't visited, for example this is tier 1 China: cashless society, amazing public transportation, clean streets, no homeless, practically zero crime, drone food delivery (in Shenzhen, certain spots only), high-speed rail to every major city in China (and even to smaller tier-2, tier-3 cities), wonderful infrastructure that gets built in years (vs decades in the West), extensive subway systems with protective barriers at every single station (so you can't suicide or push someone on the tracks) etc.

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